Want to get the most out of your LinkedIn group? Of course you do… we all do, but simply creating a group and hoping for the best is not enough. As with nearly everything else, it is going take a little work. In fact, the success of your group often directly correlates with the efforts you put in to it.

A little over a week ago, we here at Manifest Creative decided to create our own group as a part of our ongoing search engine marketing & social media experimentation. Our group is called Common Sense Marketing and our goal is to help promote the sharing of great ideas between our members, while at the same time helping each other to avoid common pitfalls of internet marketing.

We promoted the group pretty heavily through the marketing venues of Twitter and other various social medias right after it’s inception, and we quickly gained a dozen or more qualified members. This was encouraging, but what we’ve noticed now that the group is a little over a week old, is that activity within the group has already dropped off and become pretty stagnant.

Well refusing to accept a non-functioning group, I sent an e-mail today to all current members of the group with the tips below. I’m hoping that it will spark some further interest within the group. Anyhow, I wanted to share these tips as I think they can apply to any group. So here is my list… I hope you find it helpful.

10 ways to get the most out of your LinkedIn group:

1. Introduce yourself to the group, post a quick summary of who you are, what you do, and your goals for the group.

2. Share your best work with the group, after all everyone could use some inspiration from time to time.

3. Ask questions about problems or queries that are within the scope of the group.

4. Try to answer other peoples questions if you feel you have a solution.

5. Be active in discussions, this means posting, sharing and replying.

6. When you write a blog post or an article on your own website, remember to submit a link to it in the news section of your group.

7. Comment, share and bookmark (StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.) the posts of the people within your group. This will help the members of your group with their respective search engine rankings.

8. Fill out your LinkedIn profile as completely as possible.

9. Invite and refer other relevant people to your group, after all… the bigger the group, the more powerful it will be.

10. Keep checking back in to the group. Frequency and consistency will provide great pay-offs!

So there you have it… thanks! As always, if you feel this post is helpful please comment below and share it with other who you think will find it useful.